Stephen Harper’s clumsy, covert attack on the rule of law

Here’s how the Harper government betrayed the information commissioner and tried to hide it:

The Harper government’s propaganda machine was busy on May 7, a Thursday. At precisely 9 a.m. the government’s central PR site posted the first of what would turn out to be 39 press releases for the day.

One informed the nation that “Phil McColeman, Member of Parliament for Brant, on behalf of the Honourable Gail Shea, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, will present a 2015 National Recreational Fisheries Award to Mr. Rod Jones …”

Two releases announced modest federal contributions to projects in Treasury Board President Tony Clement’s riding. Only one would actually qualify as news: the government’s plan to deny passports to Canadians wanting to travel to the Middle East as jihadists.

You would have searched in vain, however, to find a press release for what was the most significant thing the Harper government did that day — the betrayal of Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault.

The Harper government did it by stealth when it introduced Bill C-59, an omnibus bill ostensibly intended to implement federal budget provisions. Buried deep in the 157 pages of this legislation were a few paragraphs of thick legal lingo that will retroactively absolve the RCMP of criminal liability for destroying gun registry documents in violation of the Access to Information Act.

The propaganda machine generated heavy static with its 39 propaganda releases and other diversions — enough to keep overworked reporters from reading C-59 too closely and asking inconvenient questions about why a budget bill was retroactively suspending provisions of the Information Act.

The Harper government has many brass horns to trumpet its achievements — even the most modest — and to muffle the sound of promises to the information commissioner being broken.

How big is the propaganda machine? Well, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation reported last year the government employs no fewer than 3,300 communications staffers whose primary function is to make the government look good. The cost to taxpayers is $263 million a year.

The total number of journalists in the press gallery — your independent watchdogs on government — is less than 300. And no newspaper, television network or other Canadian media outfit has anything like the funds the government has available to manufacture propaganda. With these vast resources, the government had every reason to believe it could pull a fast one – as it tried to do with C-59 and Commissioner Legault.

Working in secret, Harper government officials, communications strategists and cabinet ministers plotted to shut Legault’s investigation down. The government wants to give itself and the Mounties a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Here’s the background. In opposition, the Conservatives promised they would abolish the rifle registry. With a majority government in the Commons after the last election, the Conservatives thought it would be a snap. But before the Harper government could act, various legal and political challenges were launched.

The Quebec government devised a plan for its own gun registry, building on the federal registry data from the province. Commissioner Legault and her office became involved when a citizen filed an access to information request with the federal government for a copy of the gun registry. On March 27, 2012 that citizen filed a formal complaint with Legault, claiming the public’s right of access was being thwarted by the government. (Privacy laws prevent her from disclosing the identity of the complainant. But here’s a clue: The complaint was filed in French.)

Legault wrote to Vic Toews — who was the Public Safety minister and cabinet officer responsible for the gun registry at the time — informing him of the complaint and reminding him that the Access to Information Act prohibited the government from destroying the records until her office and the courts had dealt with the case.

On May 2, 2012 Toews responded on behalf of the Harper government, assuring Legault no records would be destroyed until legal proceedings were complete.

But on Oct. 25, 2012 the RCMP, one of the agencies that reports to the safety minister, began destroying the records.

Legault thinks the RCMP broke the law.

But getting rid of all copies of a digital database is not as easy as pressing a delete key. Copies of parts of the data can survive on the hard drives of many officials who had access to the original database.

Legault began what became a lengthy investigation. She now believes that at least part of the registry still exists on RCMP computers. On March 26 of this year she wrote the government, saying she expected the data to be preserved until legal proceedings are concluded.

She got no response. Instead, working in secret, Harper government officials, communications strategists and cabinet ministers plotted to shut her investigation down. They came up with the legalese buried in budget bill C-59 that would retroactively make the Access to Information Act null and void in regards to the gun registry.

The government wants to give itself and the Mounties a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Legault, a lawyer trained to cut through legal lingo, saw what was happening and blew the whistle. The commissioner is an independent official who reports directly to Parliament. The Harper government can cut her office budget (as it has over the years) and squeeze it of resources. But the Tories can’t stop her from speaking out.

That’s what she did in a special report to Parliament one week after bill C-51 was introduced.

“The proposed changes in Bill C-59,” she wrote, “will deny the right of access of the complainant, it will deny the complainant’s recourse in court and it will render null and void any potential liability against the Crown. Bill C-59 sets a perilous precedent against Canadians’ quasi-constitutional right to know.”

She’s right. But this is not just an attack on access rights. It’s bigger than that. It is an attack on the rule of law.

Jeff Sallot is one of Canada’s most experienced and respected political writers. He worked for The Globe and Mail for more than three decades, much of the time as a political journalist based in Ottawa. He started his career in political journalism at The Toronto Star when Pierre Trudeau was prime minister. He taught journalism at Carleton University for seven years until he retired in 2014.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

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40 comments on “Stephen Harper’s clumsy, covert attack on the rule of law”

Turn off the TV and stop missing the truth. Holy crap people !! How can anyone still be missing the deceit, in all their actions, even the tiniest lie makes harper feel superior. The ridiculous scripts, the lies, racism, hate, harper’s intentional selloff and destruction of our economy for spite and childish revenge. Look beyond what harper and his pee ons (who are leaving the ship like rats) tell you about how well they have done and look at the unbiased, controlled reports. The truth is in the numbers. harper has been very, very bad for Canada…. and the planet.

Excuses, and more excuses, you should address how the RCMP, helped (at Harper’s request) do a smear campaign against Mr Goodall (because Harper felt he was becoming too much of a threat during a previous election).
And our now slightly tainted RCMP, played along apparently with the game plan to the hilt, as did the media. It wasn’t till after the election and Harper got the results he wanted, did the police admit to wrong-doing. Unbelievable, doesn’t cut it.
I have always had no respect for Harper, but now I would like an investigation and some top heads to roll. Never seen such ‘dirty tricks’ done by a party, that then, whines if they are hampered in delivering their B S, in shovel loads. So, either they stand for the’ rule of law’ or we start bending a few to get rid of them —Because this is the only way they operate—–Not for too long, boy celebrations once the cons disease is finally contained in poor Alberta.

Someone needs to stop reading the manipulated gobbledygook from mr. deceit/racism/anti-Canada, anti-democracy, anti- freedom of speech, movement, assembly, script, opinion and immigrants. mr. harper is a legend in his own paranoid mind. Facts, not harper-forced malarkey, need be referenced not what he told citizens to think. Many who know that this is NOT the conservatives of years gone by. This is the reign of a sick mind so full of distain for those with less than him and his “I couldn’t care less” comments has been picked up on by the astute, not the few who don’t know yet that these are the cons.

As a former resident of Brantford, I think this is the first time since he was elected in 2008 that anything been heard of Phil McColeman. This gov’t needs to be defeated in the next election, and Stephen Harper will have a lot to answer for.

Bill C-51 is said to have received deferential treatment by the Senate committee reviewing its contents and is now on its way to the Senate for a final rubber stamp. C-51 permits security agencies to deny accused persons their basic Charter rights, and makes judges complicit in these violations.

With C-51, billed by the Cons as the “anti-terror bill”, and by others as “the spying bill”, Harper continues his long tradition of wanting to know everything he can about everyone else, while simultaneously revealing nothing about himself.

Here’s an excellent description of the “real” Harper, from Lawrence Martin’s “Harperland: The Politics of Control:

QUOTED PASSAGES

…Tom Flanagan was writing a book on (Preston) Manning called “Waiting for the Wave”. Little did Manning know that Harper, who had worked in his office, was a quiet collaborator, feeding Flanagan everything he could about his leader…

But a strange thing happened years later when Flanagan was writing a book about Harper called “Harper’s Team”. The American-born Flanagan served as Harper’s Chief of Staff at the Alliance Party. After helping him become Prime Minister he returned to Calgary but remained an important Harper strategist. He informed him about the book in advance, a fine book that reflected positively but frankly on the leader and that provided insights into the Alliance operation. Flanagan sent out advance copies of the manuscript to colleagues and friends for their comments. He was soon surprised to receive a call from Harper’s Chief of Staff (Ian) Brodie. He wanted the book killed.

“I said it was too late for that,” Flanagan recalled. Failing that, Brodie wanted extensive revisions the great majority of which Flanagan agreed to: “I cut out a lot of anecdotes they considered too revealing”. But Harper was still angry and his close and important relationship with Flanagan ended on account of it. Flanagan had little sympathy for Harper’s thin-skinned attitude. The problem wasn’t that I revealed anything that was harmful,” he said, “just that I had written the book at all.”

He found it interesting that it was okay for Harper to provide insider information for a book on Manning, but when it came to a positive book on himself, written by a close colleague, he would react with such hostility. Still, Flanagan might have known beforehand from his experiences with Harper that he could react this way. Harper, Flanagan had noticed, was very unusual in respect to secrecy and information control. He was practically manic.

I watched a Rick Mercer segment where he said, Harper “is said to be furious about the book (Harperland).”
I can’t seem to find an article I read a couple of years ago, along the same lines.
A woman was speaking at a writing conference and mentioned a man who had come up to her years before and asked if she were the author of a book.
When she said yes, he said jarringly, “You shouldn’t have been allowed to write that book!”
She was so taken aback that it stayed with her, then recognized him later as politician Stephen Harper.
The story said when she told of the encounter, the audience at the writing conference gasped, as he was now Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Do you remember who the lady was?
It’s a lot like the Bill Casey story and the way he uses unexpected rage to intimidate or stymie people.
On the day he leaves and you pee your pants, you may have to change your username.. hopefully not to No Kenney Seals.

“It’s 2015 – these aren’t your grandma’s Depends anymore, ladies. They are built for runway action.”
Ha ha ha ha… Streetheart… were they from Vancouver?
At least it’s not Kenny G.
Hey, that could be your name… No Kenny G!
Or maybe Not Kenny G would be more respectful.
I thought I had bookmarked the article about that lady but can’t seem to locate it.
Harperland, Michael Harris, and all the personal accounts paint a picture of a person that lives in darkness behind the forced smile.
However you shake it, Notley put a big crack in the Cult of Steve though.

Definitely NOT Kenny G! God, the folks at Guantanamo could have used his stuff.

I think Streetheart hailed from Saskatchewan? Maybe through Winnipeg?

Yes, Notley has the Cons all riled up – they thought THEY were the “naturally governing party”. They’ll do everything they can to undermine her. True to form, apparently Harper hasn’t spoken to her since election night. He should send Michelle Rempel to meet with her, just for the latter to exercise her fake smile muscles. She’s elsewise so busy sneering at the Opposition all the time, fiddling with her hair and electronic gadgets, it would do her a world of good.

Ha ha ha ha… Your post-Steve icon could be a picture of a smiley Kenny G playing with one of those vaudeville hooks coming from the side to pull him off the stage.
By the way, the troll is back, adding bizarre comments on pages as we speak under the cloak of night. I flagged a couple of them that were cruel to the commenters.
I wonder if saying Notley! to the troll would be like garlic to a vampire.

Ha ha … Bill changes his/her user name regularly, I’ve counted about 27 different names since I discovered iPolitics… and believes he/she is terribly, terribly clever by disrupting any logical flow of debate.
Garlic and a framed photo of Rachel Notley should have them covering their face with their tattered dracula cape.

All will hopefully be revealed and there must be so much to uncover after 40 plus years thinking they rule not govern.. Can’t wait, because if any of these yahoos try to undermine Ms Notley —there could be some fried- green-turned-red faces. Albertan’s deserve to know exactly where all the oil royalties went and where all the bodies are ready for rebirth on any front page—-.

But I think we know that the undermining came a few weeks ago, and goes to the highest levels pf federal government, and the rush will be on to manufacture doubt and sow discontent just in time for the federal election..

Under Section 11 (g) of the Charter, the government cannot criminalize retroactively what was legal in the past. Nothing prohibits the government, under the constitutional convention that Parliament is supreme, from making a criminal act committed in the past effectively legal in the past. So, yes, the Libs could legalize everything about adscam once back in power, for example, and the Cons can ram through a get out of jail free card for every illegal thing they did that we don’t know about before they are thrown from office. Chances are, a future government would see such legislation as abuse of power and repeal any such measures. That is why it isn’t done much. In the USA, retroactive laws of any kind are unconstitutional. Presidents use the presidential power of pardon as the politicians’ get out of jail free card, but sparingly.

If this retroactive law goes through, and is supported by the courts, then we can possibly conclude that Canada no longer is governed by the rule of law. We would have to rewrite our law textbooks and start teaching students that under the Harper “Closet” government, Canada had been covertly transformed into the “rule of the outlaw”.

However, there is a silver lining to it. If as expected, the Libs and NDP form a coalition government after heaving a minority Closet Party of Canada government, then they can pass two specific retroactive laws themselves. First a law to make everything the Libs had done under the Sponsorship scandal legal, and the NDP can do the same for their satellite offices (just in case).

Then when the Cons sycophants/supporters complain, as we fully expect them to, we will point to the precedent that Closet Leader had set with his retroactive law. And we will remind them that they were alright with it then. :)

Better get after both parties to make sure they know what is expected as far as a coalition is concerned. Be very careful, with a kind of slight of hand as far as how and when the ‘rule of law’ works. If Harper is allowed to get away with this now we adhere now we don’t—he could use the same method of allowing trade agreements to overrule our laws and Constitutional protections.

It’s an understatement to say that “getting rid of all copies of a digital database is not as easy as pressing a delete key. Copies of parts of the data can survive on the hard drives of many officials who had access to the original database.”

As a general rule, one must assume that no data is ever deleted fully, anywhere, ever. Anyone with an interest in preserving it, would have a backup copy, legal or not. In this case with so many police officials believing the data was essential to their own officers’ safety, it’s silly to imagine they ever complied with any order to remove or delete it.

There were never adequate protections on the use of the data. One of the legitimate reasons to oppose the registry was that police or other officials using it were never required to state anywhere why they were using it – not even a one-liner naming the case or report or incident or call or person that motivated the check. Nothing. So who’s to say that many such undocumented inquiries did not get saved to at least a partial database backup, somewhere, by someone?

You can never actually prove beyond balance of probabilities that such a backup wasn’t made by someone, somewhere, for some purpose. A racist may have made a backup of all native gun owners. A Conservative may have made a backup of all Green gun owners. An officer may have made a list of all guns owned by his ex-wife’s boyfriends (now that one, I am certain HAS happened).

The registry was a privacy invasion, yes, but there are answers to that short of total mandated deletion, and the creation of thus many backup copies.

I know this is just anecdotal, but an I.T. connection of mine says that all information is stored. Not sure if that’s just metadata or more detail, but it does seem weak to think you’re destroying all when that’s (apparently) not the nature of how the digital world is designed.

The true consequence of retroactivity here is that, once in place, nobody can ever comply with the law again. It may be a curious instance of s.11(g) of the Charter (the right not be guilty of something that wasn’t a crime at the time), since if the authorities, say, wrongly imprison me or burn down my barn, and retroactively forgive themselves, I have been found guilty of something that wasn’t a crime, no?

see also: http://www.law.utoronto.ca/documents/conferences/tax_Alarie.pdf:
“…If the current law cannot be relied upon because future amendments can retroactively affect what the governing law is deemed to have been at any given time in the past, then logically there cannot ever be conclusive compliance with the law.”

http://www.slaw.ca/2010/07/27/retroactive-unjustice/
“…[T]he literal sense of the rule of law”… has two aspects: (1) that people should be ruled by the law and obey it, and (2) that the law should be such that people will be able to be guided by it… The law must be capable of being obeyed… If the law is to be obeyed, it must be capable of guiding the behavior of its subjects. It must be such that they can find out what it is, and act on it….” [quoting Joseph Raz]

““We didn’t go to… (location) to join private clubs or become part of some elite. Ours is not the party of entitlement, not guided by power or privilege … and we never should be.”

Oliver Cromwell, referring to London?

No.

Stephen Harper, referring to Ottawa

III. Finally, what leader opined,

“This party will not take its position based on public opinion polls. We will not take a stand based on focus groups. We will not take a stand based on phone-in shows or householder surveys or any other vagaries of pubic opinion.”

Margaret Thatcher?

No.

Stephen Harper, on Opposite Day, referring to the Reformers’ “grassroots”, principles-based political strategies

To view a record of Harper’s many recorded controversial statements and assorted gaffes, including zingers such as “the best (health care) system means having a system where you have as many tiers as possible and you bring in as many health-care dollars into this country as possible”, and, shared in 1996, “I can state categorically that I would not be a candidate in any future leadership contest … The decision to run again would have meant that I was making politics my career … I’ve been at this particular game for over a decade and on a personal level I feel it’s time to get some broader experience outside Parliament. Parliament is already dysfunctional … The last thing that Parliament needs is to be filled with people who have never done anything but partisan politics”, check out:

Harper is a bit of an odd duck. Well, more than a bit…I’m not sure he really knows himself, and most if not all of what he is now I think he has been all along. As Preston Manning was to have said of Harper, “Words don’t mean much to Stephen”.

Personally, I like the one where he said publicly that if he were to accept the gold plated MP pension, he would never be able to look his wife in the eye again. Thus we have to conclude that either he had never looked Laureen in the eye since he quietly signed on to the gold plated pension, with a little bit of pressure from Chretien, or he lied. I say the latter. :)

Were in a very dark age where the prime minister every aspect of government. He is unaccountable to parliament because his MPs are unable to criticise him. All Mr. Harper needs is an addition 8% of the vote on top of his solid 30% base.

If only his base would wake up and realise they have elected a monster. Canada is dying. So, all that will be left are Mr. Harper’s legislation and ruined government programmes. His hidden agenda now is clear – he seeks to reduce “the presence and significance of the federal government in almost every aspect of the lives of Canadians” so says ex-CBC journalist, now iPolitics journalist Christopher Waddell:

Author

Jeff Sallot founded Reportinglab.com in 2010. He taught at Carleton University from 2007 to 2013 after a long reporting career at The Globe and Mail and globeandmail.com. He’s been the Globe’s bureau chief in Moscow, Ottawa and Edmonton, and the lead political correspondent for the Globe’s website during federal elections. He’s reported from every corner of Canada, and from more than 30 foreign countries on five continents. Jeff also was part of a team at the Akron Beacon Journal that won a Pulitzer Prize for Journalism for its coverage of the 1970 Kent State University tragedy. He now makes frequent broadcast appearances as a commentator on journalism and political issues.